Oh, yeah. That CB thing.

Today was my first day on "my" "new" truck.

Yeah, the quotes were deliberate.

It isn't really MY truck. I share it with two other drivers. We take turns with it (see "slip seating" for details).

And it isn't really a NEW truck. In fact, it's the oldest one I've driven. Luckily, that isn't too old. I work for a company that likes to keep their equipment fresh. A 4-year-old truck is fairly ancient for these people. But what the heck--it runs.

And it's got a refrigerator!

And a microwave!

And a TV with a DVD player!

(It also has an inverter* to power them all, but you don't typically enthuse about that--it's not something you use as such. Out of sight, out of mind...)

Oh. Yeah. It also has a CB. This is less of a big deal than you might think.

I grew up with CB. My father had one back in the Stone Age, back when the set had TUBES and the owner had a LICENSE! (Offers for museum positions will not be considered. Very seriously. Today.)

Back then it was supposed to be a cheaper alternative to the commercial radio system that big delivery, taxi and et-cetera companies used. And even then nobody used it for that. At that point the users mostly fell into two categories--the wannabe hams that didn't want to learn Morse code but did want to skip-talk across the country, and local clubs that basically used it for back-fence gossip.

Then came the 55-mph speed limit, and the CB as an anti-speed-trap weapon. Smokey and the Bandit. Etcetera. I was too young to live that experience, though I listened to "Convoy" just like everybody else. Sounded interesting.

Eventually there came a backlash. All the people who'd seen Smokey and the Bandit and The Dukes of Hazzard and listened to C. W. McCall two million times horned in on channel 19, to the point that the real truckers got kind of tired of it. I distinctly remember driving down the road one day and hearing some poor soul try to strike up a conversation with a trucker. "I ain't your 'good buddy,'" was all the answer he got.

I didn't have one when I started driving. Someone had pity on me at some point and gave me one he didn't need.** A few weeks later someone stole it. I didn't have the money to replace it.***

I haven't missed it much.

It would have been useful at times, of course. When you're backing into a truck-stop parking space, it's nice if the guy behind you can tell you you're about to back into him (though the editorial comments from everybody else can get old). And when the traffic comes to a dead stop on an interstate in the middle of nowhere, somebody ahead of you will likely tell you all about it.

But more and more, what you hear is self-appointed comedians, self-appointed political pundits, and people who just want you to hear them cuss.

So I usually leave it off.

Or I did. I've been listening more lately, for a completely different reason.

Y'see, there's an art to making out what somebody says when the bandwidth is low, the noise level is high, and he might have put some reverb into his mike to sound sexier. I never quite learned it as a child, and now it might be an asset to my livelihood. So I leave the radio on and try to make out what they all are saying.

Conspiracy theories at sixty miles an hour. Ain't it great?
-----
*inverter:
A device that takes DC from the batteries and turns it into house current. Thus you can run down the batteries pretending you never left home.

**which tells you how cheap the things are getting these days..

***which, I suppose, tells you how broke I am...

Adventures in dentistry

I'm typing this between frantic bouts of packing. I'm supposed to go out tomorrow, for the first time in two weeks.

Two weeks ago was the day I got up to enjoy my first day of home time and discovered that one of my teeth was coming apart. The next day I got a dentist to look at it. A week ago they finally took it out.

I believe I talked a while back about truckers and drugs. Painkillers and Commercial Driver's Licenses don't mix. So I had to spend a few more days getting to where aspirin and/or reasonable facsimiles thereof were enough to make me feel good. And a few more days waiting until they could put me back in a rotation for a truck.

Two weeks. With no money coming in.

Over-the-road truckers, in general, don't get paid vacations. Or paid sick time.* The assumption is, you're basically a contractor, getting paid by the job. No salary as such. No vacation time as such. No sick time, as such.**

Because of the way my particular division of the company is set up, I do get a guaranteed minimum salary. Sort of. But not when I'm not working. I'm going to have a lot of catching up to do.

Just so you know. If this is a career you want to pursue, try to have a little bit of savings on hand.
-----
*Some companies offer it. They tend to be picky about who they hire. They can afford to be.

**I do have health insurance. This is not an anti-capitalist screed. Just so you know.